Wiki is a Great Platform for Public Consensus

The article below from Fortune magazine is encouraging. Perhaps there is something like that HK can adopt. Maybe in consultation for policies, especially in IT...


http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive
/2006/08/21/8383639/index.htm

Patent review goes Wiki

An idea born on a blog is endorsed by Microsoft and IBM, reports Fortune's Nicholas Varchaver.
FORTUNE Magazine
By Nicholas Varchaver, Fortune senior writer
August 16 2006: 10:16 AM EDT

That's the basic concept behind a pilot program sponsored by IBM (Charts) and other companies, which the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office appears poised to green-light. The project would apply an advisory version of the wiki approach to the patent-approval process.

The issue is that patent applications have tripled in the past two decades, leaving examiners only 20 hours on average to comb through a complex application, research past inventions, and decide whether a patent should be granted.

As a result, critics contend, quality has declined and lucrative patents have been granted for ideas that weren't actually new.

One solution is to let astute outsiders weigh in during the patent-review process, as online encyclopedia Wikipedia does, vastly increasing the information available to the patent examiner.

New York Law School professor Beth Noveck floated the idea on her blog last July, inspiring an article in Wired News. That, in turn, attracted the attention of IBM, which got behind the idea.

Says Dave Kappos, vice president for intellectual-property law at IBM: "It's a very powerful concept because it leverages the enormous capabilities of the entire world of technical talent."

Working with IBM and the Patent Office, Noveck developed a system that will not only permit, for example, an inventor to show that an allegedly new idea is already in practice but also lets reviewers rate one another's submissions, much as they do on eBay (Charts) and Amazon (Charts).

Patent examiners will be given only the ten highest-rated pieces of input, and attempts to sabotage a competitor's application by submitting phony material should theoretically be avoided.
Test run

Corporate sponsors including IBM, Microsoft (Charts), and Hewlett-Packard (Charts) will make a total of 250 to 400 software patents available for the pilot.

Says the commissioner for patents, John Doll: "We're just trying to put the finishing touches on the details before we roll it out to the [head of the Patent and Trademark Office] and get the final approval to move ahead."

Noveck thinks the test could launch early in 2007. If successful, the approach could then be implemented throughout the patent office. "It seems fairly obvious," says Noveck, "to try to tie together some of the systems of peer production of information that we've seen in the private sector." And those who've complained about the patent process could take part in fixing it.

From the August 21, 2006 issue

Lights Out Off, Olympics Flame On

I supported the lights out campaign today and switched off lights at home at 8:00pm... I looked out my window and waited... but nothing happened. Not even a single light went off from my view. Rather disheartening to a certain degree, but not unexpected. It is not easy to remember... if without the reminder from the TVB programme, I would probably have missed it too.

全港熄燈三分鐘響應者少 (明報) 08月 08日 星期二 09:10PM

At the same time, the event for 2-year countdown for Olympics in Hong Kong was held. Which I find rather interesting coincidence... as the Olympic flame was lit not far from that time.

With the Chief Executive refusing to participate in the bottom-up lights out activity and the government fully embracing the Beijing directed olympics countdown event, what signs may be emerging for the countdown to 2008 for HK? The Legco did participate in the lights out today... what might be in store come 2008?